Category: Compliance & Customer Requirements

This year’s Cyber Security Summit: Boston was a tremendous success. It was rewarding to see so many business leaders, cyber experts, government officials, and thought leaders in one place, all dedicated to advancing the security of our cyber environment.

The event’s mission is to connect C-Suite and Senior Executives responsible for protecting their companies’ critical infrastructures with innovative solution providers and renowned information security experts.

Parsed out, this meant that the event offered up a lot of valuable insights into the state of cyber security, an exhibit floor filled with leading solution providers demonstrating the latest products and services, and much practical advice on a multitude of security and compliance-related topics.

Threat Stack was honored to be a Gold Sponsor. We were also an exhibitor, and Sam Bisbee, our CSO, was well received for his contribution to one of the main panel discussions.

Recognizing that the financial services industry is a significant target of cybersecurity threats, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) recently promulgated Cybersecurity Requirements for Financial Service Companies (23 NYCRR 500).

Five years is a blink of the eye in time, but in technology, a lot can happen. This year, we’re celebrating the fifth year of the Threat Stack blog. We’ve been digging around our archives and analyzing the metrics to see what’s changed in the market since our inception, how our own product has evolved, and what topics are still tried and true.

Some things changed, and some stayed the same. Most interesting, we saw five of our personal favorite topics rise to the top in terms of article popularity. Some written several years ago, some written this year, they’re indicative of how the market is shifting and what companies are focused on today.

Before I started working at Threat Stack, security was not always at the top of my priority list. Now, as the CFO of a leading cloud security company, I’ve learned to take a more holistic view of security: I still view it as a necessity that ensures the safety of an organization’s data and systems, of course, but I also understand that it can be a powerful business enabler and business driver.

Put another way, I no longer view security as just an expense (a “necessary evil”?), and see it as an investment that adds ongoing value throughout the organization and beyond as it not only provides foundational security, but also bolsters corporate reputation, adds confidence to customer relations, streamlines sales cycles, reassures board members and investors, helps with achieving compliance, and so on.

In spite of the huge value it adds, security can still be something of a hard sell — especially in companies where resources, including budget, are limited. With that in mind, I want to use this post to share some of the things I’ve learned as CFO at Threat Stack.Read more “5 Security Blogs Your CFO Needs to Read”

Cloud compliance, like cloud security, is never a one-and-done activity. To be compliant, you need to demonstrate it continuously. Systems must be locked down properly, users must follow specific access policies, alerts must be working properly, and so on. If a server is spun up and unprotected, if a user gets too much privileged access, or if alerts are ignored, you can quickly become noncompliant.

“We really appreciate Threat Stack’s great customer support and its Oversight team. Threat Stack takes feedback seriously and ensures that the customer’s voice is always heard. At HelloSign we are committed to making our users awesome, and we were pleased to see that Threat Stack shares the same belief.” — Raaghav Srinivasan, Security Engineer at HelloSign

SOC 2 compliance is a crucial framework for technology and cloud computing companies today. As with many other compliance mandates, it is not a simple connect-the-dots proposition, but rather a complex set of requirements that must be reviewed and carefully addressed. But it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Below, we’ll break down nine of the most common basic questions that we hear about SOC 2. Think of it as a 101 on SOC 2.

In previous posts we have described how Threat Stack can help demonstrate compliance, for example with PCI and FFIEC guidance, HIPAA, SOC 2, and other compliance frameworks. (See the Resources section below.) To assist our customers with these initiatives, we have created sample compliance rule sets that can be used to generate alerts that are mapped to specific requirements of these frameworks.

The average number of days that attackers were present on a victim’s network before being discovered is 146 days. (FireEye)

At Threat Stack, we have observed that a majority of the market is moving toward automated security vulnerability and configuration scanning.

You would be hard pressed to come by a compliance framework that did not require you to have a system to detect and manage vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are as old as technology itself, so to call yourself compliant, you first need to demonstrate that you have a sound vulnerability management program in place.

Vulnerability management systems identify common vulnerabilities and exposures (also known as CVEs), alerting you when a server or package is at risk so you can patch it immediately.